McCartney family 'may launch appeal fund for civil action'

The family of murdered Belfast father of two Robert McCartney could launch an appeal to raise funds for a civil action against his killers, they indicated today.

Mr McCartney’s sister Catherine said the family was still hopeful that his killers will face criminal charges.

But she acknowledged that the unwillingness of witnesses to come forward and speak about what they know has forced the family to consider the civil option.

Mr McCartney, a 30-year-old forklift driver, was stabbed and beaten outside a Belfast city centre bar on January 30 and a friend, Brendan Devine, was also seriously wounded following a row with republicans. The murder has placed the Republican Movement under intense political pressure.

Ms McCartney told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We are still campaigning very hard to get the murderers brought to justice, but so far none of the witnesses has come forward and spoken to the (Police) Ombudsman directly. Nuala O’Loan has said that she has received no direct statements. We would wish that people would speak to the police directly, or the Ombudsman directly, rather than pass statements (through lawyers).

“These statements are basically saying that people were either in the toilets, didn’t see anything or were on their mobile phones.

“We believe that a lot of people, particularly in the bar, saw what happened in the bar that night ... and would have seen a senior Republican sanction the murder.”

She continued: “We are thinking of a civil suit in the sense that if the criminal legal proceedings do fail us – which we hope it won’t, we haven’t given up on that and we don’t want to be seen to be giving up on that yet – but certainly down the road we will be speaking to people in the next couple of weeks about the civil suit.

“It is just unfortunate that at the moment no-one has come forward, and if no-one does come forward we are not going to get the evidence that is needed really to bring these people to court for murder.”

On financing such an action, she said: “We would have to launch an appeal, we certainly don’t have that money. Hopefully when we do speak to people in that field, we will have an idea of what really we are in for in that respect.

“I don’t think that anybody in Ireland thinks that these people should be able to walk away from what they did just because 70 people won’t come forward for various reasons.”

She was asked whether the family would be asking Sinn Fein to contribute to the costs. She said: “We will be appealing to a lot of parties and a lot of groups if it does come to a civil suit.”